Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[mandyzines]

41 minutes ago, texvox said:

Yep. It’s going to be the same story on most of these platforms. Unfortunately in exchange for a piece of the pie they all take most of the “free” out of freelance and turn us into glorified employees without the benefits, begging for favor and hoping in things we can’t control. All the more reason to expand our direct businesses. I’ve really loved working on Fiverr and I’ll continue to do so but it’s become evident in the last year that getting too comfortable here has been my mistake. 

At least you have a social space to help set the stage for off-platform ventures. Change can be scary, but that helps. 

Tinkering with Fiverr can be kind of addictive, too. I'm sitting here contemplating if I want to create a new gig video or join Hub Spot and venture into uncharted territory. 

[ch6k0r]

So how does delivery time work in the success score exactly? does it compare you to other sellers? does it count the revisions? does it count extension requests?
I've had the old delivery on time metric at 95-100% always yet I have strong negative impact on it now in the new system, how??

[arianelaurent]

12 minutes ago, ch6k0r said:

So how does delivery time work in the success score exactly? does it compare you to other sellers? does it count the revisions? does it count extension requests?
I've had the old delivery on time metric at 95-100% always yet I have strong negative impact on it now in the new system, how??

Extension requests definitely count but whether revisions do is still yet to be confirmed (Fiverr is saying different things).... 

[levinewman]

This thread took an aggressive turn because instead of us being focused on the problems we've been focusing our anger on one another. Let's remember we're all rowing the same ship, folks. And we're not the ones holding the whips.

[ch6k0r]

20 minutes ago, arianelaurent said:

Extension requests definitely count but whether revisions do is still yet to be confirmed (Fiverr is saying different things).... 

I thought extension requests are under the conflict metric

[texvox]

1 hour ago, mandyzines said:

At least you have a social space to help set the stage for off-platform ventures. Change can be scary, but that helps. 

Tinkering with Fiverr can be kind of addictive, too. I'm sitting here contemplating if I want to create a new gig video or join Hub Spot and venture into uncharted territory. 

Agreed! I can dig in a little too deep when it comes to exploring new avenues on Fiverr as well. And as we're both voice actors I'm sure you can agree it's a very nice feeling to have this kind of earning potential at our fingertips without having to go and audition for project after project. 

There's still a lot of potential here, but I'd encourage you to venture out into that uncharted territory too! There are opportunities all over the place. Case-in-point, I had someone knock on my door to campaign for a local position ahead of the primary elections at the start of this month. Through some conversation I found out she's a commercial director and producer, dropped my profession, swapped a business card and I now have a very enthusiastic lead in the neighborhood. 

[marinanp86]

1 hour ago, ch6k0r said:

So how does delivery time work in the success score exactly? does it compare you to other sellers? does it count the revisions? does it count extension requests?
I've had the old delivery on time metric at 95-100% always yet I have strong negative impact on it now in the new system, how??

The same thing happened to me as it did to you.
Prior to the update, Fiver reportedly said the extensions did not affect its metrics.

I used them a lot because I had large projects where the client had to confirm each part of the process. At least I care that my clients are happy and if I have to make many modifications I do it. To all this, the client's response time must be taken into account; Sometimes it takes up to 3 days for customers to respond. In those cases I always extended thinking there was no problem.

Now my work has a strong negative impact and extensions are frowned upon. Why didn't they give notice that this was the case before taking into account the 2 year metrics?? 🙄

Edited March 16 by marinanp86

[dereck_s]

9 minutes ago, marinanp86 said:

The same thing happened to me as it did to you.
Prior to the update, Fiver reportedly said the extensions did not affect its metrics.

I used them a lot because I had large projects where the client had to confirm each part of the process. At least I care that my clients are happy and if I have to make many modifications I do it. To all this, the client's response time must be taken into account; Sometimes it takes up to 3 days for customers to respond. In those cases I always extended thinking there was no problem.

Now my work has a strong negative impact and extensions are frowned upon. Why didn't they give notice that this was the case before taking into account the 2 year metrics?? 🙄

For situations like this I think they want you to use "Milestones". That could potentially be a fix for you with bigger orders.

[tbrummers]

11 minutes ago, marinanp86 said:

The same thing happened to me as it did to you.
Prior to the update, Fiver reportedly said the extensions did not affect its metrics.

I used them a lot because I had large projects where the client had to confirm each part of the process. At least I care that my clients are happy and if I have to make many modifications I do it. To all this, the client's response time must be taken into account; Sometimes it takes up to 3 days for customers to respond. In those cases I always extended thinking there was no problem.

Now my work has a strong negative impact and extensions are frowned upon. Why didn't they give notice that this was the case before taking into account the 2 year metrics?? 🙄

Jumping on this too - is there any documentation anywhere explaining how revision requests and extensions factor into any calculations?

I use revisions as a core mechanism within my order process since a huge part of my work requires buyers to have their say on what has been delivered to them. I always encourage buyers to request a revision: this makes the buyer feel like the order is progressing, gives us both a sense of structure, and helps me control revision requests (i.e., avoiding the buyer who requests infinite revisions). Milestones just aren't appropriate for this purpose because my orders aren't big enough to warrant "milestones" (and in many cases don't involve a second or third "milestone", i.e., "revision").

If revision requests are negatively impacting my "Success Score", I'm going to get reset from TRS to Level 0: kiss all that progress goodbye.

Edited March 16 by tbrummers

[marinanp86]

6 minutes ago, tbrummers said:

Jumping on this too - is there any documentation anywhere explaining how revision requests and extensions factor into any calculations?

I use revisions as a core mechanism within my order process since a huge part of my work requires buyers to have their say on what has been delivered to them. I always encourage buyers to request a revision: this makes the buyer feel like the order is progressing, gives us both a sense of structure, and helps me control revision requests (i.e., avoiding the buyer who requests infinite revisions). Milestones just aren't appropriate for this purpose because my orders aren't big enough to warrant "milestones" (and in many cases don't involve a second or third "milestone", i.e., "revision").

If revision requests are negatively impacting my "Success Score", I'm going to get reset from TRS to Level 0: kiss all that progress goodbye.

This is the information about reviews. I don't particularly use it, because I think it's marked as something negative.
I simply do the reviews in the chat with my client.
Some customers use the review section, but Fiver doesn't make it very clear how much this affects their successful outcome.

https://help.fiverr.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010452657-Revisions

[marinanp86]

11 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

For situations like this I think they want you to use "Milestones". That could potentially be a fix for you with bigger orders.

I have no problem with using the milestones system, but Fiver can't tell you that the extension doesn't affect your metrics and then tell you "Oops, if it does, now you're a bad seller."

Simply put, if it didn't affect your metrics before and now it does, they should have reset those results to 0 and count them from now on. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

[dereck_s]

32 minutes ago, marinanp86 said:

I have no problem with using the milestones system, but Fiver can't tell you that the extension doesn't affect your metrics and then tell you "Oops, if it does, now you're a bad seller."

Simply put, if it didn't affect your metrics before and now it does, they should have reset those results to 0 and count them from now on. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

Sure I totally agree. I also think they've straight up lied about cancellations not affecting you being fixed as well.

Edited March 16 by dereck_s
typo

[dereck_s]

I'm officially a level 0 seller (says "new seller" on mobile) now after 11 years and the only strong negative impact on my success score 4 is cancellations. I went line by line over my cancellations and I could find only 2 cancellations in the last 2 years that didn't say it wouldn't affect me "resolution center" or was fixed by CS.

Only 2 so either I'm getting screwed by something I'm not told about or resolution center white listed cancellations have a negative effect despite them saying clearly they do not.

[charlsmcfarlane]

49 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

I also think they've straight up lied about cancellations not affecting you being fixed as well.

My personal experience was that several of my gig success scores went up on the day they announced it was fixed, so I’m inclined to believe it.

Who knows though? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[rajamani255]

16 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

Only 2 so either I'm getting screwed by something I'm not told about or resolution center white listed cancellations have a negative effect despite them saying clearly they do not.

Even if you had 2 cancellations during the 2 year period it still doesn't justify your demotion to level 0.

It seems like a purge where Fiverr is randomly selecting and demoting sellers. 

[dereck_s]

3 minutes ago, charlsmcfarlane said:

My personal experience was that several of my gig success scores went up on the day they announced it was fixed, so I’m inclined to believe it.

Who knows though? 🤷🏻‍♂️

It's definitely possible but in the last few weeks they were pulling and adjusting a lot of levers and on the forums it's been quite a common complaint that it didn't go up after the fix. Actually yours so far has been the only one I've personally seen and I'm glad it did for you of course.

[sharpcity]

1 hour ago, dereck_s said:

I'm officially a level 0 seller (says "new seller" on mobile) now after 11 years and the only strong negative impact on my success score 4 is cancellations. I went line by line over my cancellations and I could find only 2 cancellations in the last 2 years that didn't say it wouldn't affect me "resolution center" or was fixed by CS.

Only 2 so either I'm getting screwed by something I'm not told about or resolution center white listed cancellations have a negative effect despite them saying clearly they do not.

In the same boat, with nowhere to complain about it, and with all the gigs dusted from the search results, it's really a bit extreme :) I have no idea how to regain what I used to have.

It's clearly disappointing. There's no clear instruction on how to gain it back. Each time customer support provides the generic, long-explained things that don't even make sense. Yet, there's no clear way or time period of how to regain it if your success score is lowered to 4. I wish they could have given each seller a time period to adjust to the new system, instead of entirely wrecking what people have earned throughout the years.
 

[tbrummers]

From TRS, my “Success Score” is now 0. My gigs are incidentally paused because I’ve been taking a break over the past month to regroup after two continuous years of “service” during which I developed to TRS. Is this really how Fiverr wants to treat their TRSs? Apparently so.

Fiverr CS response to my concerns here were totally inadequate: they didn’t engage with anything I actually raised and gave me canned responses that were no better than reading through the interface and routine communications. I was even a Seller Plus member, but this really has reframed my perspective: I am not a freelancer, I’m not even an indirect Fiverr employee. Fiverr’s responses really seem to be showing me that I’m just a schmuck.

I would love to be proved wrong. I’d love to be shown, for instance, that Fiverr conducts its due diligence on any instance of negative private feedback, but my hunch is that private feedback is taken at face value, public feedback now means nothing, and years of reputation are as valuable as the pixels its rendered with.

[leonormiserol]

2 hours ago, dereck_s said:

I'm officially a level 0 seller (says "new seller" on mobile) now after 11 years and the only strong negative impact on my success score 4 is cancellations. I went line by line over my cancellations and I could find only 2 cancellations in the last 2 years that didn't say it wouldn't affect me "resolution center" or was fixed by CS.

Only 2 so either I'm getting screwed by something I'm not told about or resolution center white listed cancellations have a negative effect despite them saying clearly they do not.

I'm in the same boat, colleague. Level 0, with the gig marked with high negative impact due to cancellations, when I've only had 2 cancellations in the last 2 years.

[charlsmcfarlane]

2 hours ago, dereck_s said:

Actually yours so far has been the only one I've personally seen and I'm glad it did for you of course.

Thanks. In fairness, the score going up might have been coincidental. There are so many factors that influence the success score that we are in the dark about, so there's really no way to know.

[johnparsons01]

Hoping that extensions / modification requests are not impacting the overall score. Recent reasons for modifications / extensions:

Been super busy and not time to review - I need to add an extension to the review period.

Oh - I forgot to mention that I have been working another job (despite me asking them repeatedly), I need a modification.

I am submitting a modification request as I need more time to review.

etc etc etc.... None of which have anything to do with me, my delivery time or my communications

[johnparsons01]

Following from my last message about communications. Received a somewhat non-specific response from my SM. If an order autocompletes, it may impact the score as it shows the buyer is disengaged and this apparently is my fault as I did not send another follow  up message between when the order was placed (when I do follow up with a Thank You and a questionnaire) and the few days to the delivery. If this happens and then the order autocompletes - bang. Buyer Satisfaction score takes a hit.

[Alex.M]

19 minutes ago, johnparsons01 said:

it may impact the score as it shows the buyer is disengaged and this apparently is my fault as I did not send another follow  up message

I'm sending follow-ups all the time but for some buyers it doesn't really matter , I have customers that place an order and log in again on Fiverr after a month , nothing that is in our control here...

[katakatica]

Just now, Alex.M said:

I'm sending follow-ups all the time but for some buyers it doesn't really matter , I have customers that place an order and log in again on Fiverr after a month , nothing that is in our control here...

I don't think Fiverr realises that some people just..  don't care.

They come on here, buy something and (in better cases) download it or in worse cases just... disappear.

I really REALLY hate running after buyers constantly, but do it because I know Fiverr might penalise me if I don't. I can only imagine how someone who goes off for a week can feel when they see 6 (or more) "oh hey, by the way" messages from me. 

(I send updates. Then updates about updates. Updates about the delivery and then the time to review things expiring and so on.)

I personally would feel pressured as a buyer (to react even if I don't like something or just didn't have time (which is why I try my best not to pressure them) but it's hard...  

[crawford_copy]

Make it make sense.